


A Bluth Family History

by angelica_church_schuyler



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Family History, Gen, History Major geeking out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-10 20:03:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15298995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_church_schuyler/pseuds/angelica_church_schuyler
Summary: A history of the Bluth family, from the 1940s to the 1990s, tracing the lives of the Bluth family and the history of the United States over 50 tumultuous years.





	1. The 1940s

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will trace the lives of the Bluth family from the 40s to the 90s. I'll focus on both milestones in the characters' lives (births, graduations, weddings, etc.) as well as major historical events.
> 
> Without further ado, let's get into it. I hope you enjoy it.

Lucille “Lucy” Jenkins was born on the 10th of June, 1941. America entered the war six months after Lucy was born. Her father went to fight almost immediately. Lucy didn't properly meet him until she was three.  
Lucy doesn’t remember the war very well. She vaguely remembers the rationing in the years following, and she remembers her father being away and then coming back. Mama said that he came back different. She remembers her baby sister, Edith, being born in 1945.  
Lucy’s childhood is defined by her family. The way she remembers it, her father had difficulty getting a job after the war, and they were always wanting for something. But, unfortunately, they always had each other.  
Lucy has to share all of her dolls with Edith, even though Edith isn’t old enough to play with dolls yet. Most of her clothes come from her older cousins, or are made by her mother. By the time she’s six years old, she’s started to learn to sew alongside her mother, making clothes for herself, for her sister, for Mama, for her dolls. When she starts to get good, Mama even lets her help patch up Papa’s work clothes.  
She starts school in 1947. She learns to read and to write, and how to get along with other children. She’s not very good at that part. She enjoys art classes, and detests most of the other children.  
She tries very hard to get good marks, but of course she needn’t do that, as her teachers remind her. She only need know enough to teach her own children, and perhaps to impress an educated man and convince him to marry her.  
They also note that she needs to learn to be nicer to the other children, but she honestly doesn't think they deserve it.  
Lucy spends a good deal of time imagining the man she’ll one day marry. She has everything planned out, from which name he will have to replace her own (“Johnson”, she decides, as she won’t have to change her initials), to where they’ll get married (St Stephen’s Chapel, down near Lisbon Street). She’ll wear a lovely white gown. They’ll have four children (two boys and two girls, obviously). Lucy will teach them to read, and she’ll teach her daughters to sew and to cook. She’ll teach them the games she likes to play, and how to skip rope, and the songs she likes to sing.  
Yes, Lucy thinks she’ll quite like being a grown up.

* * *

George Oscar Bluth and Oscar George Bluth were born on the 8th July, 1935.  
They spent their childhood fighting, both play fighting and real fighting.  
The two boys were both identical and complete opposites.  
George was always more aggressive than his brother, and smarter too. This had become clear by the time they had started school. Where George was ambitious, Oscar was lazy. Where George was intelligent, Oscar was emotional. Where George was rational, Oscar was impulsive. Their teachers posited that George would become the President someday, and Oscar...well, perhaps Oscar could join the army.  
At this point it was 1942, and the country was officially at war, with no indication of where it would end. At seven years old, the twins were just a bit too young to fully understand what the war meant. Of course, this didn't stop them from enthusiastically playing at war, pretending to shoot at each other and fly bombers over Germany.  
Their father, unlike most of their friend’s fathers and uncles and brothers, didn’t go to war. He said he was important enough to the country that he had to stay at home.  
When the atom bomb dropped, the only thing it meant to the twins was that the war was won but the rationing had to continue.  
The rationing had eased up by the time the boys started high school in ‘49, and America was beginning to settle into a post-war sense of security. The economy was thriving and society was settling back into normalcy. The 50s were shaping up to be a great decade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will probably be more focus on Lucille than George in these early chapters, purely based on the fact that I like her more.  
> I'm a history major so this fic is just an excuse for me to geek out about history and Arrested Development at the same time.  
> I hope you like it.


	2. The 1950s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucille, George, and Oscar begin and finish high school. George starts a company. America enters the Cold War in earnest and rock 'n' enters the mainstream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pinterest board: https://pin.it/pbc3jcmp636bkj  
> 

As America entered the 1950s, Lucy Jenkins found God.  
Everyday Lucy rushed home from school to observe her newfound religion: _American Bandstand._  
Her living room was her church. Bob Horn was her Messiah. Edith (who she forced to help her learn the partnered dances) was her fellow (although reluctant) worshipper. She knew every dance. She knew every word to the theme song. She decided early in the show’s run that being on _American Bandstand_ was her biggest dream, her _only_ dream. If she could do that, she could die happy. Gee, even just meeting Bob Horn would be enough.  
It was 1952 when the Jenkins bought their very first television set, just in time for the premiere of _Bandstand._ They didn't only watch the television for _Bandstand,_ of course. In fact, she was the only one who watched it. Her father and mother liked to watch the news. Edith loved _I Love Lucy._ But for Lucy (Jenkins, not Ball) nothing was as good as dancing along with Bob Horn and his band of American teenagers.  
Her parents hated _American Bandstand_. Mama said it was giving her “ideas”, but Lucy has no idea what she meant by this. Papa just didn’t seem to like music, but especially modern music. And _especially_ rock and roll.  
Rock and roll made its way to the Jenkins’ tiny town in Arizona in 1956, Lucy’s freshman year of high school. Her father called it “coloured music” and expressly forbade his daughters from ever listening to it. So, of course, they bought a little transistor radio and would sneak out to the backyard or down to the basement to listen to the newest record by Little Richard or Elvis. Lucy especially was obsessed with Elvis. If her parents ever saw the way he danced they would have simultaneous heart attacks. This was part of the appeal. He meant everything to her. Elvis and _American Bandstand_ and James Dean, they were all so _different_ to everything her parents loved. Everything the adults disapproved of was what the kids loved. They were symbols, of new ideas and new movements, of the fight against her parent's generation, of the promise that her generation (the so-called Silent Generation) wouldn't fuck up the world like their parents did. They signified the new world that they would create.  
As Lucy made her way through high school, _American Bandstand_ accompanied her, through every boring Home Ec class, every bomb drill, every awkward groping session with boys at the drive-in, the protests and tension of the integration of her school. They both changed over the years. Lucy got older, wiser, meaner, learning to hide her intellect so as not to threaten the fragile boys around her. Dick Clark replaced Bob Horn and _Bandstand_ moved to Los Angeles. As soon as she graduated, Lucy followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this to just get rid of George completely. He'll turn up sometime in the 60s.
> 
> The 50s were a super interesting time to be a teenager because previously there weren't really teenagers. They were just kinda considered smaller adults or taller children, but in the 50s _Catcher In The Rye_ was published, rock and roll exploded, _Rebel Without A Cause_ came out, and people started to think "hey maybe teenagers are people, and if they're people then they're another demographic we can exploit!" It was also the real beginning of the Cold War in a cultural sense. The Cold War officially started in 1949 but the fear of nuclear war, the anti-Communist propaganda, etc. all started in the 50s. It was such an interesting time.  
> 


	3. The 1960s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Cold War heats up, Lucille goes to Vietnam, and Gob, Michael, and Lindsay are born.

Lucille’s _American Bandstand_ dreams hadn’t quite panned out the way she’d hoped.

For one, she wasn’t actually on _Bandstand_ yet, she was working at a Stuckey's.  
For another, she began to think that at 21 she might be getting a little old to be one of the teenagers on the show.  
And with nuclear war with the Soviets on the horizon, she suspected she might be dead before she even had the chance to try.

Lucille was at work when she heard President Kennedy on the television, reporting that there were Soviet missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles away from America. He assured his fellow citizens that America would do anything that was needed to curb the Soviet threat to the country, which calmed absolutely no one.  
The boss had sent everyone home.  
The entire country spent the next two weeks on edge, certain that the Soviet ships would try to cross the quarantine, or that the US would finally drop a bomb on Cuba and the Soviets would drop one on America.  
Lucille suspected that all of the bomb drills she’d done in school would actually be useless in the event of the real thing.

Finally, _finally_ , the President came on television again to let the country know that the threat had been neutralized. 

A year later, when Kennedy had been shot in the head in Dallas, Lucille thought only of the relief he’d imbued in his people when the missile crisis had ended. She’d never supported a Democrat - or, God forbid, a _Catholic_ \- in her life and she never would again, but she could admit that he’d been quite a good president. He’d died young.

Even though _Bandstand_ hadn't worked out, she was still determined to be a dancer. It was the only thing she'd ever wanted. It was one of the few actual career options she saw open to her. She was smart, very smart, but men were always threatened by smart women. She doubted she'd get the chance to do something with her intellect, despite graduating top of her class and being accepted into multiple colleges. Her mother had told her she could be a teacher, or maybe a typist or a secretary, but her best course of action was to just try and find a good husband as soon as possible. She wondered what kind of man her mother considered "good", and where the hell she could find one.

In 1965, America had joined the Vietnam War and Lucille had joined the USO. She’d heard a group of guys at a table she was waiting on gossiping about some friend or another who’d been drafted and had immediately written home about the dancers. Lucille had looked into it as soon as possible, did all the necessary tests and physical examinations, and quit her miserable job to travel halfway around the world. 

She was back at said miserable job as soon as her first tour was up. It turned out the USO didn’t pay all that well, at least not for dancers. So, back to Stuckey’s she went. In a way, she was lucky that it was such a crappy restaurant because no one else wanted her job and she didn’t have to grovel much to get it back.

It was in late 1965 that she met Oscar Bluth. He’d dropped into her restaurant on the way to some anti-war protest or another. He was a little older than her, a draft dodger, with a nice face and long dark hair. Oh, that hair. In the months they dated, he took her to protests, to concerts, and to rallys. Sometimes he'd even drive her to auditions. But most of the time they’d just sit around smoking and drinking and talking about life. Lucille admitted that she didn’t think she ever wanted to have children, even though everyone wanted her to. Every boy she had dated had talked incessantly about their wedding and their children and she just didn’t want any of that. Oscar was the first one who understood.

They had plenty of fun together, sure. But everywhere they went was sort of dirty and loud, and Lucille knew that Oscar would never really grow up. If they stayed together, she knew, she’d be stuck with this drugged up man-child for the rest of her life, having to provide for the both of them, probably taking double and triple shifts at Stuckey’s until the end of time.

It was after 7 months of dating Oscar that he introduced her to his twin brother, George. George had Oscar’s nice face and crooked smile. He had dark hair too, even if it was starting to recede a bit. He understood her, and he understood that children weren’t on her immediate radar. She’d only just turned 25, after all. Most of all, he had a business. The Bluth company was doing fantastically. George was already making enough money to support himself and his brother, who lived on handouts, and would be able to support her too. 

So she left Oscar. He hadn’t been happy about it, but oh well. The relationship wasn't going anywhere. It never would. Lucille wanted to get on with her life. Oscar never would.

In the fall of 1966, George and Lucille got married. It was a small ceremony. In fact, it was so small that no one else knew about it and it was held at the Orange County town hall. But they’d dressed up anyway, him in a nice suit and her in a simple white dress that she’d hoped would hide her stomach. She wasn’t starting to show yet, but she worried nonetheless. They released the marriage announcement and received all of the presents and cards in the mail.  
George went back to work two days after the wedding. Lucille went to live at Escondite cottage by the beach. She sent the maid, Rosa, out for pregnancy books to read and maternity clothes to accommodate her quickly growing stomach. She called her mother for the first time in years. For the first time in her life, she wanted for nothing. Except maybe a second chance at being 25. 

On May 4th, 1967, she gave birth to a boy, with only Rosa for company. George said they should name the baby after him, so he became George Oscar Bluth II.

They waited a month before releasing the birth announcement. It was after this that Lucille and Baby George (and Rosa) reentered society.

They called him “Georgie”, until that became too confusing and he became "George 2", until that _also_ got confusing, “G.O.B” (“Like JFK”, Lucille explained to anyone who asked) and eventually “Gob” (“Like from the Bible.”)

In late 1968, Lucille was eight months pregnant for the second time. She informed George, having to raise her voice to be heard over little Gob’s babbling and squealing, that the Sitwells, his biggest rival, were thinking of adopting a baby. What if, she suggested, they adopted the child from right under their noses?  
George went along with it, like he went along with most of her ideas. After all, he won’t actually have to deal with the child much. Then again, Lucille doesn’t either. She loves her son, of course, but Rosa does a lot of the difficult child rearing. Lucille does most of the cuddling and playing. She sings him to sleep, and sometimes she feeds him.  
They agreed to adopt the little girl, Nellie. They decide they'll change her name, Nellie sounds awful. They're told that her birthday is January 31st. Lucille's due date is January 20th, so they decide to raise the two babies as twins.

This plan is complicated when they discover that Nellie would not be born on the 31st of January, as they’d been led to believe. No, she’d be turning three two weeks after her supposed twin’s birth on the 14th of January. They went through with it anyway, partly to annoy the Sitwells, and partly because Lucille began to worry that she’d only have boys. She'd like at least one daughter. Nellie really is a beautiful little girl. She got along with her new brothers extraordinarily well, despite Gob’s initial distrust of her.  
The two toddlers ended up becoming good playmates (why didn't she think of passing _them_ off as twins?) and even trie to help with their newborn brother. Rosa sometimes lets them.

The whole family, including Rosa, gathered together in front of the television on the 20th July 1969, to watch as Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon. Despite Gob and the recently renamed Lindsay chattering the whole time and Michael beginning to cry at some point, she clearly heard Armstrong's first words as he stepped out of the shuttle.  
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

It seemed like a fitting way to close out the decade. America had begun the 60s as an innocent and optimistic nation and ended it cynical and jaded. Lucille had begun the decade a 20-something-year-old waitress/aspiring dancer, and now she was a housewife and a mother of three. If that much could change in just one decade, God only knew what would happen in the next few.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo that was a long one. The 60s were a huge decade, both for America and for the Bluths.
> 
> You may have noticed there was no George POV this chapter. That's because I really don't like him and it became physically painful for me to have to think about him.  
> I chose the characters' birthdays (except Lucille's) using their actors birthdays and what I think their approximate birth years would be.
> 
> Next chapter: the 70s.


	4. The 1970s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucille ponders motherhood, America finds a new sci-fi obsession, and the kids start to get older.

The 70’s were a tiring decade for Lucille.  
Having to help take care of three small children, as well as helping her husband with his rapidly expanding business, were exhausting and thankless jobs.  
Part of her envied the young women she saw on the news marching in the streets, demanding the right to be something more. She would never say so, of course. She was content enough. She loved her children. She even loved her husband.  
Still...some recognition might be nice.

When Oscar marched back into her life in 1972, she got a little bit of that recognition. He still loved her, worshipped her even. He got along with the kids.  
Part of her entertained the fantasy of taking the kids and leaving with Oscar. She imagined a quiet, peaceful life with someone who loved her and showed it. Someone who really appreciated her for everything she was and everything she did.

And then Oscar would open his mouth and just ruin the whole thing.

He still claimed to be an “activist”. He said he had meant to go to the anti-Vietnam protest at the Lincoln Memorial back in ‘67 but he’d slept in and just decided not to go. He had no clue what women were protesting about. He was completely clueless about everything going on with President Nixon. He had claimed that he had written a song for David Cassidy and that he’d been at Woodstock, but no one believed him. No one except Gob, but he was five so that hardly counted.

Oscar left just after Gob started school. Apparently, he was going off to start some lemonade business. Lucille couldn’t decide whether or not she was happy about it.

About eight to ten months into Lucille’s third pregnancy, she squeezed herself into the driver’s seat to ferry Gob to his first day of second grade. He already hated school. He was always a restless kid, and schools weren’t really designed for kids like that.  
On the drive there, Lucille pondered why any woman ever decided to get pregnant. She couldn’t remember. She was fat, her feet were swollen, her back hurt, she had to pee all the time, and in a month she’d have to squeeze a human being out of her body and experience the worst pain that was humanly possible. And for what? For a baby? Was the six-year-old next to her clutching a polyester backpack and kicking his feet in the air worth it? Was the three-year-old in the back seat babbling to his sister (an adopted little girl who Lucille hoped would be able to enjoy some of the freedoms the women in the streets for protesting for) worth it? Maybe. Maybe this next baby would definitely be worth it.

Almost exactly a month later she got the chance to find it decide. Byron was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. She had never been more terrified. The doctors assured her that there would be no long-term complications, but when she finally got the chance to hold him she decided she’d never let him go again.

* * *

Michael was very confused about the baby.  
He’d been told that he was getting a little brother, but he didn’t really understand where the baby would come from. His mommy and daddy said the baby was in his Mommy’s stomach, but that didn’t make sense unless she’d eaten the baby or something.  
Lindsay was no help. She didn’t get it either. They tried going to Gob (he was older and he went to school so they thought he might know) but he’d just rolled his eyes, told them to ask their parents, and gone back to his piano practice. Michael suspected that he wasn't sure either.  
Later that year, (September 30th, 1973, to be exact) Daddy had taken them all to the hospital to meet the baby. Michael guessed that the baby really had been in Mommy’s stomach because her stomach was a lot smaller than it used to be and now she was holding a baby. Mommy informed him that his name was Byron. She wouldn’t let Michael hold him because he was “too young”, which Michael thought was dumb. But Byron was kinda cool when he wasn’t crying so Michael didn’t mind too much.

Michael had a lot of fun in the next few years. He started school with Lindsay the year after Byron was born, and he loved it. He loved reading and writing and math and even homework. He’d expressed this opinion at home once and Gob and Lindsay had looked at him like he was alien so he decided to keep it to himself. He was told that the Boyfights videos he didn’t know his dad was making and wasn’t aware he and his brother were starring in were doing really well in Latin America, which was...cool, he guessed. 

Michael had always thought Byron was kind of a terrible name, so when his little brother was two and Gob decided he was a lot like Buster Keaton and refused to call him anything else, Michael was extremely grateful. He was sure that when Buster got older he’d be grateful too. At this point in his life he was really too young to understand...well, anything. 

Michael decided he wanted to learn about his dad’s business when he was about eight. Unfortunately, he hadn’t realised how complicated things like the real estate market and company finances and business in general were, but he tried as hard as he could to keep up. His dad said he tried harder than Gob did, which was kind of a backhanded compliment and a little mean to Gob but Michael took it anyway.

To the Bluth siblings, the biggest and most important event of the 1970s took place shortly after Gob’s tenth birthday: the release of Star Wars.  
The kids convince their mom to let them all go see it together, a decision Michael guessed she probably regretted later. They spent hours arguing after the movie until they finally decided that Michael would get to be Luke and Gob would get to be Han. Lindsay was obviously Leia because she was the girl. Buster was always stuck being R2D2 because he was small and a little robotic.  
After Michael and Lindsay’s tenth birthday devolved into a bloody lightsaber battle between the two boys that ended up almost destroying the living room, their mom decided that playing Star Wars was now banned. It was the greatest tragedy of the kids’ lives so far, worse than when Grandma Jenkins died. 

It was in that moment that the kids truly became leaders of the Rebellion.

Although their version of the Rebellion was less like a guerilla force against a dictatorial government and more like four kids complaining to their dad until he agreed to let them play Star Wars again as long as their mom didn’t know about it.

The rest of the decade was a little bleaker. School started to get harder (and practically all schoolwork paused in 1976 for the Bicentennial celebrations. The schoolkids were used as free labour). He spent Tuesday nights from 8pm trying to watch _Happy Days_ while Gob and their mom complained about Chachi trying to replace Fonzie and insisted that no one could ever replace the Fonz. His dad never did take him to their cabin like he’d promised. The kids watched, unsure what to do, as the news of Elvis Presley's death broke and their mother burst into hysterical tears. She hadn't even cried that much since their grandmother died. Gob offered her a half-hearted pat on the back and Buster hugged her. She told them through tears that he had meant a lot to her when she was a kid.

Michael and his siblings started to learn to expect more of the same disappointment from their dad and criticism from their mom. They learned how to cheer each other up when one of their parents called Lindsay fat or Gob dumb. They learned not to expect their dad to follow through on his promises.  
Most importantly, they learned that they were each other's worst enemies and greatest allies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how to end things.  
> This chapter marks the shift away from Lucille's perspective and towards the kids' perspectives.  
> I'm excited for the 80s.  
> Thank you for reading x


	5. The 1980s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The MTV generation comes of age, and the Bluth siblings start to grow up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for period typical homophobia, implied bulimia, and implied miscarriage.

Gob was 14 when he found himself wide awake at midnight, covertly watching TV with the volume down while everyone else was asleep. He hadn't slept in days, and he was getting kind of sick of it. But tonight was different. Tonight, he witnessed a rocket launch on TV.  
But it wasn’t just some regular rocket launch, oh no. It was the beginning of the 80s. At least, that’s how Gob thought of it later.  
The rocket launched. He watched as an astronaut stepped onto the moon and planted a flag with the letters ‘MTV’ stamped on it. A voiceover proclaimed “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.”  
The VJs were introduced. The premise was explained (24 hours a day of music. _On TV!_ ). And then the music finally started.

_I heard you on the wireless back in ‘52,_  
_Lying awake intently tuning in on you,_  
_If I was young it didn’t stop you coming through_

It didn’t take long for Michael and Lindsay to come into the living room to complain that the TV was keeping them up. It didn’t take long for them to become just as enthralled as their older brother. The idea seemed insane. And yet it worked. 

_Oh, oh_  
_You were the first one,_  
_Oh, oh,_  
_You were the last one,_  
_Video killed the radio star,_  
_Video killed the radio star_

Just like that, with one station, one video, one song, TV was changed. Music was changed. And the Bluth kids - like the rest of Generation X - found a new obsession and a new name.

_In my mind and in my car  
We can’t rewind we’ve gone too far._

* * *

In the wake of the cancellation of _Happy Days_ , Gob desperately searched for something on TV to fill the void. They all watched a lot of MTV (except their parents, who hated the very idea of music videos), Buster liked all the science-y shit on PBS, and Gob and his mom always watched _Dynasty_ together (and mourned together when Rock Hudson died), but nothing was like _Happy Days_. He missed Fonzie.  
There were sitcoms all over TV. Mostly sitcoms about families, which he found incredibly boring. _Silver Spoons_ , _The Hogan Family_ , and even _Family Ties_ weren’t terrible. Some of them didn't have perfect nuclear families and they even occasionally showed some kinda fucked up people. It was kinda cool.

And so, the general lameness of TV meant that the Bluth siblings mainly stuck to movies. Gob saw _The Breakfast Club_ on a date and had to pretend to go to the bathroom to hide the fact that he couldn’t stop crying. The kids had made the mistake of seeing _Back to the Future_ with their parents and had to listen to the two of them reminisce about the 50’s for, like, three days.

Gob didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to politics (none of the kids did, except stupid perfect Michael) but he did have some idea of what Reagan was up to. His parents love Reagan, they say he’s going to do great things for the economy and return America to what it was before all the minorities started to get greedy, but Gob just gets...weird vibes from him. He’s not sure why, but the guy doesn’t seem trustworthy. He doesn’t tell his parents this, but he does confide in James, a friend from Magic Club.  
“He’s a total fucking homophobe,” James informs him. “He’s not gonna do anything about GRID, at least not while it’s only killing gays. Probably thinks it’s God’s punishment or some shit.”  
James, as usual, turned out to be right. He was such a cool guy. He was kind of a stoner, and he had some...interesting ideas that he wasn't afraid to express very loudly in front of a lot of people, but Gob liked him despite his rants about how capitalism was a corrupt system and how he was convinced that Freddie Mercury was queer. And actually, the more obsessed Gob became with Queen (and he was really, _really_ obsessed with Queen), the more he started to suspect that James was right.  
Which wasn’t like, bad, or anything. Gob didn’t mind that Freddie was gay. Gob didn’t care one way or the other, as he constantly reminded other people. Freddie can be gay, who cares? Freddie can suck as many dicks as he wants, doesn’t make him any less talented. It doesn’t diminish his status as one of Gob’s heroes. He’s still right up there with Elton John (who Gob already knew was gay, he’s not dumb), and Franz Liszt, and the Fonz. It didn’t mean anything to Gob. Nope. Nothing at all.

Anyway, high school sucked. Everything about it (other than Magic Club and James) was awful, and it wasn’t made any better when Lindsay and Michael showed up. Michael (stupid perfect _Michael_ ) started when Gob was in his junior year, and Mikey immediately became known as “the smart brother”. Gob had to start threatening senior who made gross remarks about his baby sister almost as soon as she walked in the door. But that was fine. Whatever. It wasn’t like Gob cared. He didn’t care about anything. It was fine.

You know what was really fine? Totally, completely, absolutely fine? In 1982, the day after Gob turned 15, when their mom announced a new holiday she was starting called ‘Cinco de Quatro’. And it was even more fine the next year, on the very first Cinco de Quatro, on May 4th, 1983, when everyone was so caught up in the celebration that they forgot Gob’s 16th birthday. Gob didn’t even care.

It was totally fine in his junior year when Eve Holt told him she was pregnant. She said that he wasn't allowed to tell anyone and she'd deal with it herself, so it was totally cool. All good. Nothing to worry about.

He tried not to care about college applications, but he did anyway. Everyone, from his parents to his guidance counsellors to his piano teacher, had told him not to get his hopes up about Juilliard, and he tried not to. They told him not to give up if he didn’t get in. He could try again next year. There were other music schools. It was fine.

Lindsay, Buster, and James were the only people he knew who weren’t surprised when he got in.

Everyone was surprised when he dropped out after a year. He just wasn’t suited for higher education. But it was fine. He didn’t need piano. Magic was just as good.

He was back just in time to have to pick up a traumatised and sobbing Buster from school after a space shuttle launch the class was watching went horribly wrong. Buster had always dreamed of going to space, but Gob guessed that that dream was over now. They went out for ice cream after Buster had calmed down a little.

Gob was also home to see Michael and Lindsay graduate high school a year later. Michael wasn’t valedictorian, which had angered Gob considerably, but Michael seemed okay with it. The valedictorian had been some girl in the twins' class (she was either named Stacey or Tracey, Gob couldn’t remember) with red hair and brown eyes. She was kinda pretty, even though she was a little bit awkward. Lindsay was very proud to have been awarded ‘Best Hair’, so much so that even her mother’s cracks about her graduation gown making her look fat barely phased her. 

While Gob was trying to figure out how one became a professional magician, Michael was working part-time at their dad's company while also going to law school. He’d met that red-headed girl from high school again (by now Gob was pretty sure her name was Tracey) and they started dating. Buster had started high school, which completely freaked the older ones out (since when was their baby brother old enough to be in high school?) and he seemed to actually be thriving. Milford prided themselves on their students being neither seen nor heard, and Buster was surprisingly good at both.

Lindsay, strangely enough, was married. She’d met the guy, a psychiatrist named Tobias Fünke, while travelling the country after graduation. Their parents hated him, so she decided to marry him. Gob really admired how utterly petty his sister could be. The newlyweds moved to Boston. 

The next year, Gob was lying on the couch at whatever hotel he was staying at watching some non-descript sitcom that was not even close to filling the _Happy Days_ shaped hole in his heart when he got a call from Michael. How Michael knew where to find him he had no clue. Michael was “elated” (exact words) to announce that he was going to marry Tracey.  
“Oh my god,” Gob said. “How far along is she?”  
Apparently, she wasn’t pregnant, it wasn’t for monetary or tax purposes, and it wasn’t for revenge against their parents. They were getting married because they actually wanted to. Gob supposed that was kinda nice. He didn’t expect it to last, but he hoped it did. Tracey was actually pretty cool.

The wedding took place in February of 1989. Gob had planned to be the best Best Man ever and do an epic illusion as part of his speech, but may or may not have accidentally set his new sister-in-law’s hair on fire.  
When he escaped to the hotel bathroom after the unfortunate illusion, he found out that Lindsay had beat him there and was currently throwing up everything she’d eaten that day. He’d found her like that multiple times in high school, having overeaten and then felt guilty about it after their mother made some horrible comment, so he knew what to do.  
He held her hair back and patted her back and told her that she looked pretty and she shouldn’t listen to Mom because she wasn’t fat, she was actually pretty skinny, and then Lindsay interrupted him to tell him that she was pregnant. Apparently, she and Tobias had been trying for ages and, after spending a lot of company money on IVF treatments, she was two months along. Lindsay agreed that Gob would be the coolest uncle ever, and made him promise not to tell anyone yet. She said she didn’t want to take attention away from Michael and Tracy.  
“And...it just...it feels too early,” she’d whispered. “I don’t wanna tell anyone and then...and then lose another baby and-and have to tell people and...I guess I’m just scared.”

Being scared was perfectly reasonable. Scared was an emotion Gob understood all too well. He’d been scared his whole fucking life. He was scared now. Scared that Michael’s marriage wouldn’t last, scared that he’d never meet Lindsay’s baby, scared that he would be left behind. His little siblings were getting married and having babies, even baby Buster was winning academic awards left and right. Gob was a college dropout, a semi-professional magician, and couldn’t make a relationship last longer than three days.

But he didn’t care. He was happy for them.  
Everything was totally fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter yet and was written in lieu of my sociology homework. If my professor ever sees this I want you to know I'm not sorry.  
> Fun fact: Jason Bateman starred had a recurring role on _Silver Spoons_ and was one of the stars of _The Hogan Family_. On _The Hogan Family,_ he was one of the first people on American national prime-time TV to use the word "condom". The more you know.  
>  A few quick notes: The Bluth kids are all part of Generation X, also known as The MTV Generation due to the influence MTV had on American pop culture while that generation was growing up. James refers to "GRID", which stands for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency and was the original name for HIV/AIDS.  
> Thank you all for reading, love you, bye.


	6. The 1990s

Lindsay Bluth-Fünke was having a girl.

When she first told her mom that was pregnant, she’d been warned about the supposed “curse” that Lucille claimed she had: she could only have sons. Even when Lindsay pointed out that she _had_ a daughter, she was convinced that the curse had been passed down to Lindsay.  
But she was having a girl. A tiny, beautiful baby girl that she would get to go shopping for and dress up in cute little outfits and raise to be a strong, independent woman.  
She had never been more excited in her life.  
She had also never been more fucking terrified in her life.

The books and mother’s groups always told her that pregnancy was a beautiful thing, the most incredible time of a woman’s life. Lindsay had to disagree.  
She spent the first three months of her pregnancy terrified to even tell anyone (except for her husband and her brothers, but they didn’t really count) in case it went wrong. Every time she looked at her stomach and saw her little bump get bigger she felt a little bit sick and had to push her mother’s voice out of her head. Getting bigger was normal. It said nothing about her.

The mother’s groups don’t tell you about how scary being pregnant is. The constant fear of losing her baby was bad enough, but the fear of actually having to be a mother was paralysing. She hadn’t really thought about it before. She thought that you got married, and then you had kids, and then you were a mom. That’s how it had happened for her parents, right?

Thank god for Tracey. Tracey was a fucking miracle. Tracey was Lindsay’s greatest confidant for her entire pregnancy. Once Tracey found out she was pregnant, Lindsay was four months along. Weirdly, Tracey had been the one to reach out to Lindsay, thinking that she might have some idea of how to deal with the whole thing. Needless to say, she didn’t, but the two called each other every day, Tracey from a small but nice house in Orange County and Lindsay from a big apartment in Boston. 

They were both scared, and excited and unsure about everything. They helped each other think of names (personally, Lindsay wasn’t a fan of her nephew having two first names, but Tracey and Michael disagreed), pick out nursery colours, figure out what weird feelings were normal and what meant they should probably see a doctor. 

Mae was born in September of 1990, and George Michael was born two months later. Lindsay and Tracey had a lot less time to talk while attempting to look after two newborns, but they tried as much as they could. They both agreed that when they finally met, George Michael and Mae were going to be best friends. Their moms knew they were just going to _love_ each other.

Tobias wasn’t home a lot. As it turns out, psychiatry is kind of a difficult job. Who knew? When he was home, things between them were...okay. Admittedly, she wasn't quite as in love with him as she was when they got married. He was good to her, and he was great with the baby. She was getting closer to convincing him to agree to getting a nanny. 

Tracey understands, a little. Michael had quit law school and went to work for the Bluth company the moment he found out Tracey was pregnant. Apparently, he wanted them to have a steady income or something, but he was barely home either. Their dad did always have a tendency to overwork his employees. And Tracey had put her studies on hold too. She couldn’t exactly take a baby to classes with her. 

By the time Mae was a year old, Lindsay had gotten the World Wide Web. At least that was some sort of change. She was sick of reading the same magazines over and over again, having the same inane small talk with the nanny every day. She’d finally managed to get back to her pre-baby weight and finally felt comfortable going outside again. If she managed to lose a few more pounds, she might even go and visit her mother.

In 1992, Lindsay was finally forced to introduce her daughter to her family. Tracey wanted the two cousins to finally meet, and managed to cajole Lindsay into coming to Buster’s high school graduation. The graduation itself wasn’t very eventful (she could barely see any of the graduating class), but the visit itself...oh boy. 

Her mother had started out alright. She’d even mentioned that Lindsay didn’t look like she’d put on a lot of weight. She didn’t say a thing when Lindsay ate something. And she doted on Mae, apart from a few comments about hoping her freckles eventually faded.  
She complained, of course, about everything. She hated Bill Clinton, she said he was unfit to be president and reminisced about the days of Ronald Reagan, of all people. She couldn’t understand why people were rioting in LA, completely unable to open her mind to the injustices of the Californian “justice” system that allowed LAPD officers to go unconvicted after beating innocent black men. But, at least for a little while, it wasn’t aimed at her kids.  
Of course, her mother’s civility soon turned to slight hostility, openly nitpicking and critiquing Lindsay’s parenting. As if Lucille Bluth was a fucking supermom. Of her four kids, one was Lindsay, one was a perpetually nervous and borderline Oedipal high school graduate, and one was currently M.I.A (the last anyone had heard Gob had been in Vegas, but it had been a while since anyone had seen him). The other was Michael, but he must have been a fluke.

Some good came out of the visit. Aside from getting to see two out of three of her brothers for the first time in a long time, Lindsay got to catch up with Tracey and finally meet George Michael. The toddlers got along like a house on fire. It was adorable. Eventually, it had to end, and Lindsay prepared herself not to see any of them again for a long, long time.

That didn’t work out. Lindsay, Tobias, and Maeby ended up moving in with Tracey, Michael, and George Michael after the Eastern Seaboard was almost destroyed by what people were calling “The Storm of the Century”. As much as she didn’t want to be living with her brother anymore, and as uncomfortable as he seemed around Tobias, it was an alright living arrangement. Lindsay and Tracey would team up to look after the kids after Tracey went back to school. Lindsay had the kids while Tracey was in classes and their husbands were at work, and Tracey took care of them when Lindsay was sleeping or shopping. And, thanks to Gob finally coming back from Vegas and being forced to babysit the kids, Lindsay and Tracey were even able to hang out on their own sometimes. 

The Bluth-Fünkes finally went home just before an earthquake hit LA. Nowhere near Lindsay’s family, but still too close to home.

The next few years were mainly uneventful. Maeby started school, Lindsay realised that she had no idea where her daughter’s nickname had come from, she and Tobias began to host wine and cheese fundraisers for important causes, and Gob excitedly informed her that he was starting an “Alliance of Magicians”. At some point, the government had shut down or something, and apparently the president got impeached for getting a blowjob in the White House, but Lindsay didn’t really pay attention to the news.  
She paid a little more attention to the whole Y2K thing. The whole idea of everything in the world run by a computer malfunctioning at the same time was horrifying. 

The Y2K disaster never actually happened. The world didn’t end, at least not for most people. It might as well have ended, with the way Michael sounded when he called his sister to inform her that Tracey had ovarian cancer.  
All Lindsay could say was “Shit.”  
“Yeah,” was Michael’s reply. “It kinda sucks.”  
“How is she?”  
“Well, she’s not happy about it.”  
“Yeah, no, of course, she’s not. But...Michael, if I know Tracey at all she’s gonna fight like hell.”  
Michael either laughed or sobbed at that, she couldn’t tell which. “I don’t know how to tell George Michael. I don’t know what to do about any of this.”  
“You’ll be okay, Mikey.”  
“How do you know?”  
“I know you.”

Theirs was a dysfunctional, fucked up family made up of broken, fucked up people. For better or for worse, this group of idiots were the people she was stuck with. An evil mastermind for a mother, a selfish businessman for a father, a larger-than-life magician for an older brother, a twin who was just trying to keep everything together, and a baby brother who might never grow up.

The turn of the millennium became a turning point for their family. 

When everything falls apart, families have to stick together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was listening to a playlist of 90s music while I wrote this and 'I'm Blue' started playing and I fucking lost it.  
> The 90s weren't as crazy a time as the rest of these decades so not a lot happened outside of the Bluth's family lives. Anyway, that's the end! I hoped you enjoyed this crazy little journey through the mid to late twentieth century.


End file.
